Frustrations are running high over Bayside Village, the independently-owned student housing complex on Marginal Way in Portland.
Tensions between residents, management and the city erupted late last week, after the Portland police department mandated drastic changes to the building’s community guidelines.
At first, Bayside’s management complied, and a notice was posted across the building with 11 new restrictions concerning guest policy and the consumption of alcohol, set to go into effect on October 31st (a day later).
According to the notice, tenants would be allowed only one visitor at a time without receiving the express permission of management.
The new rules also banished open containers of beer, wine and liquor from all common spaces, including kitchens and living rooms. The maximum number of people allowed in an apartment at once was reduced from 16 to eight.
But just as abruptly as they were announced, the new guidelines were dropped entirely, as Halloween night approached.
Responding to outrage from residents, a building-wide meeting was held late Friday afternoon in Bayside’s closed courtyard. There, owner Joseph Cloutier – founder and president of Realty Resources LLC – told a crowd of appoximately 40 residents that he intended to challenge the mandates from police and preserve their independence.
“If we could go back in time, it probably would have been better to fight it and never put them out,” said staff trainer and consultant Lori Lavoie, referring to the guideline changes.
“We heard the residents concerns.”
Lavoie took over as Bayside’s interim property manager after Scott Ranger was dismissed just one month in, following a rash of police visits over noise complaints and underage drinking- 17 in the first 30 days.
“It was a mess,” she recalls. “There were a ton of non-residents all the time, people were skateboarding down the hallways. That doesn’t happen anymore.”
Lavoie immediately began processing evictions against five residents she says were the primary sources of trouble. The eviction process, however, gave those residents 30 days to leave, and to cause more chaos.
She also began co-operating heavily with police – or, at least, thought it was co-operation.
For much of October, law enforcement was visiting the complex regularly on weekend nights, patrolling the hallways and checking on excessive noise. Last week, as police made their case for changing the community rules, it became clear that the department was counting those “walkthroughs” as disturbances, Lavoie says.
The Portland police department would not return repeated calls for comment.
“They’re reprimanding the wrong people,” said Brooke Hayne, a Bayside resident and sophomore psychology major at USM. Despite the reversal of the guideline changes, she says the initial scare made it clear that the terms of their lease could be altered at any time.
“We didn’t sign up for a dorm, we signed up for an apartment,” she added. “Had we known we were going to be treated like this, we could have gone elsewhere.”
Hayne says that she and others are looking into legal action. Bayside’s management says they have not recieved any threats of litigation, but would “work to address concerns” of residents who felt they should be released from their contract.
A group of anonymous residents – including at least one member of Bayside’s community assisting staff – delivered a two-page document to building management and the Free Press. Written in the style of a news article, it quotes residents referring to the complex as “Bayside Village Student Jail”, and expresses “distaste” for incoming property manager Benjamin Westman.
Westman was a former student life coordinator at St. Joseph’s College, and is currently being trained by Lavoie, who expects to leave Bayside for another position within Realty Resources.
Westman authored and signed that initial notice that sparked the backlash. As controversial as the actual guideline changes were, the notice also mistakenly implied that the posession of any “open container” outside of a residents’ bedroom might result in eviction. Rumors developed that this could apply to something as innocuous as a carton of orange juice or a glass of milk, but management insists this was meant to refer only to containers of alcoholic beverages.
In the newest notice, the only guideline change that survives is a requirement that guests be signed in at the front desk. The number of guests is not limited.
While the fallout from forgoing police mandates remains to be seen, Bayside does plan to make some changes to how it handles security within the building. Managers plan to deal with the vast majority of disturbances internally.
Police will only be called in the most extreme cases, such as instances of underage drinking, and any police intervention will result in the immediate eviction of those responsible.
“What our residents do inside their apartment is their business,” says Lavoie. “Only if they break the law and we get pulled in, will we get involved.”
Bayside Village opened it’s doors a week before the start of the fall semester. It has attracted around 300 student residents from schools across Southern Maine, but primarily USM and Southern Maine Community College. The biggest challenge, according to all involved, has been offering prices and amenities comparable to the typical college dorm – with the freedom of a typical city apartment.